The easy-to-use Pharos Drive GPS 250 offers a surprising number of premium features for the price.

At $299.99 (list), the Pharos Drive GPS 250 is quite a bargain, especially since it hardly seems like an entry-level model. This inexpensive device comes with many of the features found in premium, higher-priced personal navigators, such a large, 4.3-inch screen, a sensitive, top-notch satellite receiver, and text-to-speech functionality. Still, as you might expect, the GPS 250 isn't completely without limitations: You get only a small POI database and support for just a few spoken languages.

//Compare Similar Products

The GPS 250 comes equipped with a widescreen 4.3-inch, 480-by-272-pixel display and runs navigation software on top of Windows CE 4.2. The device, built around a 266-MHz Freescale MX21 processor, is equipped with 8MB of ROM and 64MB of SDRAM. Powered by a 1,200-mAh lithium-polymer battery that's good for about 5 to 7 hours of operation, the GPS 250 measures 3.3 by 4.8 by 1 inches (HWD) and weighs 7.4 ounces. At an inch thick, the 250 isn't exactly svelte; the thinnest units on the market, like the Garmin nüvi 760 and the Mio DigiWalker C520, are a full quarter inch thinner.

Navteq maps for the U.S. (including Hawaii and Alaska) and Canada and a fairly small one-million-entry points of interest (POI) database are preloaded on a supplied 1GB SD card. Though there's an external SD card slot, it's not meant to be opened. In order to take out the card, you have to remove a nearly impossible-to-replace metal cover and break a seal that voids your warranty. On the same side as the SD card slot (left), there's an audio output jack, as well as a mini-USB connector for power that's protected by a small rubber flap. The right-hand side of the unit has a power switch as well as a recessed reset button. The device comes with a stylus, which stores neatly inside the case.

In the box, you get a suction-cup mounting bracket, a padded carrying case (complete with belt loop), and both DC and AC power cords. A printed quick start guide is available on the included CD, which contains the user manual. As with many other entry-level GPS models, you have to connect the power directly to the device because there's no power pass-through on the bracket itself. Moreover, Pharos does not include a dashboard mounting disk, even though several states prohibit the attachment of navigation devices directly to the windshield.

The main menu is simple, with only three icons: Go, Map, and Settings. The Go icon takes you to a submenu that provides you with four choices for setting a destination. You can choose a new address, a recently found destination, a POI, or an entry you previously saved in your address book. When you complete the address entry, the destination is shown on the map, and you have a choice of quickest or shortest route.

In the map view, you have a choice of 2D north, 2D track up, or 3D track up views. The Map Display Settings screen gives you control over which icons appear. By default, zoom-in and zoom-out icons appear in the upper corners of the screen. A Map Browsing mode, available through the Settings menu, lets you scroll the map by touching it. I especially like that when you touch the screen in both Map Browsing and Map View modes, the address of the point you touch is displayed. You then have the option of adding it to your favorites or navigating to it. This, along with the other toggles on the map view, minimizes the number of screen taps necessary to perform common functions.

Points of interest are arranged in 50 categories, with six of the most commonly used ones (Food, Lodging, Shopping, Fuel/Auto Service, Transport, and Entertainment) on a top-level menu. You can search for nearby POIs, ones near your destination, or even ones near an address. You also have the ability to find POIs by name or select any of the 50 categories to display as icons on the map view. POI information contains the complete address and phone number, but because of limited memory, the POI database is small. In addition, based on the number of restaurants near my home that are listed but are out of business, the database seems to be somewhat out of date. Another drawback is that the device supports only two spoken languages, English and French.

On the road, the GPS 250 created routes that were consistent with test routes generated by other devices using Navteq maps for navigation. During my standard route calculation tests, the GPS 250 took approximately 12 seconds to plot a trip to a destination 12 miles away in Brooklyn. Finding its way to a destination 640 miles away in Ohio required 21 seconds. Route recalculation time after a missed turn was acceptably speedy.

Compared with the Pharos Drive 140, the GPS 250 represents a significant improvement. Older Pharos devices used confusing Ostia navigation software, but the 250 uses software from Destinator Technologies, which I feel is better organized and easier to use. Although the 250 lacks media players and a Bluetooth phone interface, and can't get real-time traffic updates, it does speak street names, a feature not found in the similarly priced Garmin nüvi 200W or the TomTom One XL. Small POI database aside, if you're looking for a basic, wallet-friendly, widescreen GPS, the Pharos Drive GPS 250 is definitely worth checking out.